Deadly Serious

by Jean Chapman

  ‘Born here, not planning to move,’ he answered, deadpan. He was told he could go but his coat would be needed by forensics.

  ‘Right,’ Hoskins said and, nodding his goodnights, left.

  Cannon touched a metaphorical cap to him; he had played his part to perfection.

  When he had gone, Betterson stretched himself to his full height, exhaled heartily and pronounced, ‘Well,’ as if now he could start the job in hand properly, ‘you seem to be having traumatic times.’ He looked from one to the other, then focusing on Cannon added, ‘Traumatic trips …’ When this drew no response, he added, ‘to Leicester.’

  ‘It had a few unpleasant surprises,’ Cannon answered, quickly adding his own question, ‘I understand you and the Leicester Police are liaising?’

  ‘Leicester?’ Betterson frowned, then said, ‘I’d hardly call it liaising, we certainly had a call to check your identity. In a murder case we don’t want to let anyone go until we’re sure we can contact them again, as you will know. They were satisfied about Sergeant Maddern but unsure why you were there.’

  ‘I felt he needed company, I consider myself a friend of Jim Maddern,’ Cannon said.

  ‘Bit of family trouble, I understand.’ Betterson nodded. ‘Jones told me he’s put him on leave to sort it out.’

  ‘Did he?’ Cannon began, images of Maddern’s ruined home in his mind, and he too wondered if Jones had arranged to have it done to keep Maddern – the man with too much local knowledge – out of the way.

  There was another flurry of activity in the doorway and four plain-clothed officers piled in. There were Scene of Crime officers, officers with cases, cameras, tripods and white suits. Betterson greeted their manager as they all proceeded to pull on their protective pristine coveralls while the Detective Inspector gave a résumé of events.

  ‘We have a lounge upstairs, we could go there out of the way,’ Cannon volunteered.

  Betterson nodded. ‘I’ll come and see you up there when I’ve shown these officers everything.’

  Cannon and Liz retreated to their spacious lounge, which in daylight commanded a broad view of marsh, sea and sky, with Cannon’s bird-watching telescope in the central window.

  ‘So what’s this about looking for the dog and finding a body?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Is this body a plant they want found?’ Cannon wondered.

  ‘But why?’ Liz asked.

  ‘A decoy of some kind,’ Cannon suggested, ‘to divert attention from somewhere else, but it’s who it is that worries me.’

  ‘What worries me is at what point do we—’ Liz hesitated and her voice fell, ‘tell all?’

  ‘I want Maddern by my side, in all senses of the word, when we do,’ Cannon said. ‘I don’t think Betterson has any doubts about Jones at all. We mustn’t wrong-foot Maddern. He may think he doesn’t care about losing his job and his pension now while his family are threatened, but he would later.’

  ‘It would be the loss of local respect that would hit him hardest,’ Liz was saying as there was a knock at the door, and Betterson came in.

  Cannon gestured towards an armchair, but Betterson shook his head. ‘I must get over to Inspector Jones, but I have a message for you,’ he said, ‘from an old colleague. Detective Chief Inspector Robert Austin.’

  ‘Chief Inspector!’ Cannon exclaimed. ‘Well done, Robert. He was my sergeant when I was in the Met,’ he told Betterson. ‘So when did you see Austin?’

  ‘It’s the Met we’re liaising with, not Leicester, they believe we have a couple of vicious criminal gangs about to clash here. Chief Inspector Austin thinks the London lot are already moving in to settle old scores.’

  ‘With a local gang?’ Cannon asked.

  Betterson nodded. ‘We’ve been doubtful, particularly when the Met said they were talking of a king’s ransom in gold bars, but the man shot in your cellar …’ he paused, ‘is one of our local villains. Not only that but Inspector Jones, through his local contacts, believes this body found on the estuary is also connected. Good man, Jones, built up local knowledge, and does his paperwork on time, not many are good at both.’

  Betterson, already on his way to the door, added ‘You’ll be closed until the forensic people have finished, of course, but we’ll do it all as soon as we can. The only mystery is why these people chose to break into your premises. They must have thought you had something they wanted.’

  ‘Well, Jones was here drinking the other night,’ Liz said. ‘Perhaps they thought they might waylay him.’

  ‘And pick up a bit of loot on the side,’ Cannon added.

  The propositions were way out, but they certainly seemed to give Betterson another straw to chew on.

  When he had gone, Cannon looked at Liz with raised eyebrows, but Liz tossed her head defiantly. ‘Jones is using everyone for his own ends, why shouldn’t we use him. I don’t want you in lock-up for abducting vital witnesses and withholding evidence, and,’ she added with extreme sarcasm, ‘what’s this about Jones, the perfect copper, with his local knowledge?’

  ‘It’s probably one of these classic cases where Jones is giving the police—’

  ‘His colleagues,’ Liz added bitterly.

  Cannon nodded, his face grim. ‘—a few valid bits of information they could work on to make him look good to his superiors, while diverting attention from the true activities of the Jakes clan – leaving them free to gather up the loot and make a run for it before the opposition get organized.’

  ‘So what is our plan of action?’ Liz asked, ‘Now, at this moment.’

  ‘We wait until the police have finished here and until we hear from Maddern that Danny and his mother are safe.’

  ‘And why are we doing these things?’ Liz added relentlessly.

  Cannon lifted his hand and counted the reasons. ‘First, because the gold has been moved and we don’t know where to. Second, because we suspect Jones may be trying to send the police in the wrong direction. Third, we don’t want to reveal where Carol Smithson and Danny are because, if Jones is a traitor, that could lead to their deaths. Fourth, Maddern is the key person the Jakeses and Jones are trying to shut up and they’ve done everything now except carry out their threats to murder either him or one of his family.’ Having counted along all his fingers, he hovered above his thumb.

  ‘You needn’t go on,’ Liz said. ‘I just hope we hear from Maddern quickly.’

  There was a police presence at The Trap all that night, the next day and night and until lunchtime on the Monday, during which Cannon and Liz learned that the body found on the coast was that of William Thompson, who had apparently drowned. Cannon had been incredulous.

  ‘Drowned!’ he exclaimed in private to Liz. ‘They are not trying to say he went especially, all the way from Snyder Crescent to the sea, to drown himself? Never!’

  He watched the police tape being gathered up and the last of their vehicles move away, but he grumbled his way around the public house as they spent the rest of the day putting things to rights, removing the last traces of forensic activity, replacing chairs and tables to usual positions. They had decided to give themselves the whole of Tuesday to, as Liz said, ‘get their minds in gear again for business’ and not to reopen until the Wednesday morning. Cannon had contacted a local carpenter who could repair the cellar door on the Tuesday and put handrails down both sides of the steps. Both wondered why they had not had this done before. Cannon wondered how long it would take for him to stop noticing the over-clean area of brickwork at the bottom of the steps.

  Both were on high alert for the call from Jim Maddern. Every time the phone rang, nerves tingled – but it was never Maddern.

  Chapter 13

  By midday Tuesday, Cannon was looking for things to do, things to distract himself from endless calculations of how long it had been since Maddern had left with Danny and his mother. The big question was: why wasn’t he answering his phone? He got out the road map and Liz used the internet to confirm the nearest motorway service-station hotel
, then suggested, ‘Why not go for a jog, help you relax.’

  ‘How will that help?’

  ‘If we’ve heard nothing by the time you come back we’ll both go to the service station and make discreet enquiries,’ she said. ‘Alamat looks a mess but says he’s fine, he can take any calls and phone us if he hears anything.’

  It was a relief to slip on joggers and trainers, to launch himself into steady, muscle-stretching exercise. The air was mild, still, not how he liked it, as he padded along narrow lanes, in the opposite direction to his usual routes. The wide, flat countryside, views of meadows interspersed with wide drainage dykes and the great expanse of sky were all part of everything he would have enjoyed about a normal run. This wasn’t a normal run, not a normal day. If he were still in the Met it would be normal, his mind full of regrets about victims, concerns about those threatened, but most of all concern for a man he still felt to be a colleague. ‘Once a policeman, always a policeman,’ he muttered.

  He wanted to be doing something, pushing things forward to a conclusion, to fair play, to justice. The only useful thing he had decided he could do on this run was go and see Hoskins and the dog.

  It was with a sense of some irritation that he realized someone was coming towards him. He did like his runs solitary, but this was midday not early morning. Then he realized that the man approaching was Hoskins, on his bike, with the dog on a long piece of garden twine running by his side.

  ‘Kept hearing this noise,’ Hoskins shouted as they neared each other, and he slowed to a halt. Cannon caught the bike and then held on to the twine as Hoskins made an excited and clumsy dismount.

  ‘Noise?’ he queried as Hoskins, both hands free, now rummaged in his capacious coat-pockets. With a grunt of satisfaction he located something with his right hand.

  ‘Think I heard it last night when I took the dog out at bedtime, very faint, then it stopped. Then this morning I heard it again, several times and realized it was coming from the same place all the time.’

  He finally extricated a mobile phone from a tangle of more twine. ‘It’s Jim Maddern’s,’ he said. ‘It’s got his name inside the cover.’

  Cannon felt the bottom of his stomach chill. ‘Where did you find it?’ he asked.

  Hoskins pointed back the way he had come. ‘Opposite my place, the lane that leads to the main road.’

  ‘Show me,’ Cannon said.

  Hoskins took the bike and Cannon held on to the dog, which seemed placidly to accept what was meted out to it, and walked with all the quiet elegance these lanky dogs have.

  ‘Its name’s Charlie,’ Hoskins said, ‘it’s on his collar. He doesn’t know much about kindness; if I put my hand out to him he cowers, but he’ll improve.’

  ‘You’ll keep him?’

  Hoskins nodded and it was left at that as they reached the T-junction with its signpost indicating it led on to the town of Boston.

  ‘It were here, near the edge of the road.’ He indicated a spot about six metres into the lane. ‘Can’t understand it. I mean, he would have been driving his car, wouldn’t he, why should he get out and drop his phone?’ His tone went from anxiety to grumbling as he added, ‘Too many bloody queer things going on around here.’

  ‘Such as?’ Cannon asked as he scanned the verges both sides and then the road ahead. There was a tyre mark as if a vehicle had swung sharply into the lane, gone to the right then corrected sharply to the left – or had it pulled over in front of another vehicle? Maddern’s vehicle?

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but knew it would be serious from the second you mentioned the name Jakes. Not too sure I want to know, but I tell you one thing – while most of us round here just make ends meet there are some who have ready money to pay out huge sums for things.’

  ‘Such as?’ Cannon repeated.

  ‘I know one chap, and heard from him of three others, three others, who’ve been paid over the odds in cash for their motor cruisers.’

  ‘Motor cruisers?’ Cannon questioned, not sure how relevant this would be or where this fitted into the equation.

  ‘I know the holiday season’s coming, but at this time of year …’ Hoskins turned his lips down in disbelief and doubt, ‘nobody’s that desperate for a boat.’

  ‘No,’ Cannon said, the possibility of it being someone money-laundering flipping in and out of his mind as he found there were eight missed calls on Maddern’s phone.

  ‘You’ll let him have it back?’ Hoskins asked.

  Cannon was aware Hoskins watched him carefully as if to gauge how worried he was about the sergeant. ‘I’ll drive over to where I think he is as soon as I get back,’ he said, ‘but I can’t tell you more than that.’

  ‘When do you open again?’ Hoskins asked.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Cannon replied.

  ‘I’ll see you then,’ he said as they reached his cottage. Hoskins leaned his bike on the fence, took over the dog and Cannon began a sprint back to The Trap fast enough to make it feel like there was a breeze.

  He burst into the back door, ready to hurry Liz on the way to the service station, but she was on the phone and waved his haste down. ‘He’s just come back, I’ll pass you over.’

  ‘Yes!’ he said sharply.

  ‘Dear, dear,’ an educated voice said mildly.

  ‘Austin!’ he immediately recognized the voice that could command attention without volume and in its lower register revealed his mother’s French origins. ‘Just who I need!’ Cannon exclaimed.

  Chief Inspector Austin laughed, briefly, then went on. ‘The man shot in your cellar,’ he stated the premise for his call, then his concern, ‘a lackey of your local villains, the Jakeses.’

  ‘Known to the police here for generations, and …’

  ‘I’ve not much time …’ Austin interrupted, but there was respect in his voice for his old superior as he went on, ‘Godfather Jakes just out of prison, regrouping his family and his assets in a dash to renew “the life-style” in a new venue. Unfortunately we’ve no clue where this might be.’

  Cannon listened intently, realized Austin was walking as he talked, walking quickly.

  ‘This new life will be funded by assets hijacked from a London gang. The story in gangland is both gangs decided to do the same hoist. The Faima …’

  ‘The what?’ Cannon muttered. ‘Never heard of them.’

  ‘Fay-ma,’ Austin pronounced, ‘anagram of Mafia. They’ve grown up from urchins to villains since your time. The Faima got there first, did the job, took the risks, then the Jakeses came in and took the loot from them with minimum trouble and only a few hundred metres from the security firm’s gates. There’s been sniping ever since, several murders but, like the Brink’s Mat job, the majority of the gold is still out there. We’re sure of that, because every one of the Faima is now either in your area, or on the motorways keeping watch for the Jakeses.’

  ‘The motorways,’ Cannon repeated, then added, ‘I know some of this.’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ Austin said.

  ‘Are you in the area? I need to see you, talk face to face.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said briefly, ‘early.’

  ‘Right,’ Cannon answered.

  ‘Keep a low profile,’ Austin said, ‘and be warned: these villains have made a study of all the Mafia’s arts.’

  ‘I know their ideas about family,’ Cannon muttered as he closed the line and, turning to Liz, added, ‘You drive and I’ll talk.’

  ‘The service station?’ she queried. ‘And you’re going like that?’

  ‘Yes and yes. I’ll tell you about this,’ he brandished the phone, ‘Maddern’s, found at the side of the road.’

  In under an hour, and after the telling about Austin and Hoskins, they reached the service station in a dour mood. They located the square accommodation block behind the restaurants, protected from traffic noise by a bank and a screen of evergreen laurels and rhododendrons. They walked into reception and, as planned, Liz did the talking.

&
nbsp; The girl behind the desk seemed entranced by her own silver-flecked black nail-polish, turning her fingers this way and that to see them glint under the lights. Her young features were wiped out by a pallid mask of make-up, her eyes as black and exaggerated as any ancient Egyptian queen. She looked up reluctantly only after the usual throat-clearing and Liz had knocked on the counter almost beneath her nose. Cannon wondered how she’d got the job – a young, susceptible, male manager?

  ‘I’ve arranged to meet an old friend and her thirteen-year-old son here,’ Liz said, ‘I wonder if you could tell me if they’ve arrived.’

  ‘A man booked for his sister and her son, but they didn’t come,’ the girl answered, her mouth almost a sneer.

  ‘Her brother would be staying here,’ Liz said, ‘a big man, six foot, well built, may have been here a day or two.’

  The girl finally looked at the registration book. ‘Yeah, know him, he’s booked till the end of next week,’ she conceded.

  ‘So he’s not here now?’ Cannon asked. She shrugged.

  ‘Could you ring his room? Tell him Liz and John are here.’

  Another shrug. ‘I suppose.’

  There was no answer. They thanked the girl and turned to leave, but both glanced back as they reached the entrance. The girl was entranced by her nails once more and as one they turned left along the corridor towards the accommodation.

  ‘Room 76,’ Cannon whispered.

  ‘I know, I saw,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

  Room 76 was left, just beyond the first corner. They knocked and waited, there was a trolley laden with towels and cleaning materials further along. A middle-aged woman in maid’s uniform and apron came out of a room a few doors away.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, ‘I’ve just done that room, there’s no one in. In fact the gentleman hasn’t slept in the bed for a night or two, but he’s been back and brought more of his things.’